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Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Book Blast ~ Taken by the Beast by Anya Summers

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Anya will be giving away a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn commenter. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Gemma’s life was nearly perfect. She’s just graduated from college and is heading off to graduate school in the fall. She and her best friends are taking a trip she’s always dreamed about. Only, nothing goes as planned. After being chased on the streets of Dublin by a freaking monster, they get sucked into a portal and wind up on another world. As in, not Earth. Now she can’t find her friends, but there is this really hot, naked guy who calls himself a king and is offering her aid.

There’s only one teensy little problem: He says she’s his mate and is planning on keeping her—forever. Oh, and there’s one more thing: He’s a beast most of the time. And Gemma has to decide if she’s willing to give up everything for the one man she’s meant to be with in the universe.

Read an Excerpt

The big beast followed them from above. Its great wings stirred air currents and created a wind tunnel in the alley. Dust and rocks pelted them. She searched for an escape, a doorway or a window they could climb through to safety. But the windows were too high up for them to reach. Their footsteps slowed as they reached the gray brick wall. A dead end. Their dead end.

“What are we going to do?” Moira gasped, frantically searching for a way out of their situation.

Anna whimpered. “I’m not seeing this. We’re not here. We just had something put in our drinks, and we’re back at the hotel. This is just a nightmare.”

Gemma glanced down the alley, attempting to divine their odds of making it back out the way they’d run. And then the thing, for she couldn’t call it anything else, landed in the alley and blocked off their escape route. They were fucked.

They flattened themselves against the brick wall. Gemma searched for a way out, a way to survive.

Moira and Anna flanked her. She wished she could cry like they were doing. Anna was hysterical, telling herself to wake up. Moira was whimpering, her fearful moans guttural, sounding more like they were coming from a wounded animal than a human. But for Gemma, the night had taken on a surreal bent.

The creature approached. Its booted feet crunched over the pavement. What kind of monster wore leather boots? Her scientific brain tried to make sense of the tableau. The thing appeared to be male, judging by the lines of its chest on down to its groin. His large wings, even at rest behind him as he crept toward them, spanned the width of the alley and cut off any chance of escape. The pointed tips of his wings dragged along the brick, scraping the stone. The sound was like nails down a chalkboard.

That’s when things got really weird.

As if their entire night hadn’t become completely FUBAR. They awaited their fate. Pressed against brick. Gemma had always wondered how she would feel at the end of her days, and now she knew. Thoroughly livid. She was incensed that this thing thought to screw up her well-laid plans.

His glowing silver, otherworldly gaze stoked her fury. Anna and Moira were devolving into fear. Their choked sobs filled her with dread. She was the one who had suggested this trip to celebrate their graduation. Her best friends, her sisters of the heart—their deaths would be on her. Anna had wanted to go to the Bahamas. But Gemma had swayed them, persuaded them to go to Ireland instead.

Before she could apologize and tell them she loved them, the wall they were backed up against, awaiting their fates and most likely their final moments, dissolved. Although, maybe that was too simple a term. It melted. The bricks liquefied into nothingness. Instead of stone at their backs, a swirling black mass that reminded Gemma of clouds spiraling inside a tornado, took the brick wall’s place.

The monster was close. Too close now. And he—it—picked up its pace to capture them. She didn’t want to know what the creature had in store for them.

“Go,” Gemma cried, urging her friends to step into the swirling black mist.

About the Author: Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Anya grew up listening to Cardinals baseball and reading anything she could get her hands on. She remembers her mother saying if only she would read the right type of books instead binging her way through the romance aisles at the bookstore, she’d have been a doctor. While Anya never did get that doctorate, she graduated cum laude from the University of Missouri-St. Louis with an M.A. in History.

Anya is a bestselling and award-winning author published in multiple fiction genres. She also writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance under the name Maggie Mae Gallagher. A total geek at her core, when she is not writing, she adores attending the latest comic con or spending time with her family. She currently lives in the Midwest with her two furry felines.